My job is boring and I have NOTHING to do. Once I make the schedules for my employees, the place runs itself, so I get to sit in my office and look busy. No one can see what’s on my computer screen since it faces me and not the door, so I can do whatever I want on it. I’ve watched hentai on that thing at work. IT’s great.

None of my students have ever been into anime. I mean, one or two have talked about like Ouran or Fruits Basket, but nothing good, so it doesn’t count. If I did join a student for an anime night, it would occur after they’re out of my class. I can’t have anyone blame me of favouritism.

I’m the Assistant Director of a university department that oversees the campuswide tutoring center. So I hire tutors that are my employees. But when the math department needs an instructor last minute, they ask me to teach a section or two. So that means I have students as well.

It’s almost the time for the new season, and that means time for the sub groups to make their quarterly Donation plea.

Commie is off to an early start. Though after fnord and Xythar’s Hitler memefest I’m not sure any sane person would give Commie money to repeat that abomination.

The sheep will throw money at Horrible, who in reality only need a $2 seedbox. How someone can justify giving money to Horrible when they could just get a Crunchy subscription and bypass the middleman altogether is beyond me.

Lets see who else is struggling? Chihiro will bump their “we need $250 cause we’re $200 in the red” post that they wrote back in 1974. Like seriously, people might give you money if you didn’t just bump the same old bullshit post each season.

FFF will just let Archdeco cry about his laptop some more. That seemed to have been successful, it didn’t help them actually release anything though.

Dude, I have no fucking clue. And I don’t bother to look into it. But actually playing the rat like you’re Eric-senpai from RYM is pretty ridiculous–not to mention hypocritical–given that you used to fansub yourself and that it’s the primary source of content for your site.

Lots of things feed my ego. Just because idiocy entertains me doesn’t mean that I want to incubate it. Nobody saw me shed a tear when Hadena or Ayako died. And you won’t see drier eyes than when Commie finally kicks the bucket.

I think you’re seriously misinterpreting my stance. I love fansubbing — I think it’s a great way to get people into anime. But as a “by fans for fans” venture, I don’t believe you should profit from it, and I certainly don’t believe you should lie to people in order to fill your wallet… which is what you at Commie are doing. $6k a year, fucking hell. And that’s just from one source. You have bitcoin, litecoin, Paypal, and ads all bringing in the paper.

If Commie can’t be run without filling up your wallets to stupid amounts, then it probably shouldn’t exist in the first place. Stripping honorifics and re-encoding HorribleSubs rips ain’t exactly integral to the scene’s survival.

Slow down there. I just edit shit–I have no idea what else happens behind the scenes other than the fact that the server’s been dead or something for almost a week. Where is this $6k figure coming from?

Even I couldn’t tell you how accurate that number is. I don’t know how old the account is, the intervals at which they calculate averages, if that was weighted by one big donation, etc. If you really do want to play investigative reporter, that’s fine. But at least find something substantial before arriving at your conclusion.

For the record, I don’t know how any of this works, nor do I consider myself some sort of representative of Commie (or any one particular group, for that matter). I’m just an editor. But if you’re right, and money is being squandered, then sure, that sounds like a problem.

A mild encoding server of a brazilian fansub(Xeon e5, 64gb RAM and 100mb/s of upload in unlimited bandwidth) used to cost $280 a month.
Not defending commie, but servers that encodes 1080p faster than 2fps in placebo mode are X-pensive.

Edit:
I really meant mild, since there are servers dozen times stronger and expensive than that.

People have also forgotten how much fucking money big groups like Commie got from DDL sites, especially back when Megaupload was alive. They made bank, easily enough money to survive for years to come granted they saved the money and only spent it on server costs.

Of course it didn’t go to actual fan-sub related things. That was my point. If Commie used all that money for running their servers, they would still have money from DDL sites and would never need to ask for donations.

I mean, it’s not a complete loss; I’ll just email Funi’s legal department if Chad can’t understand basic logic. I’m not just gonna stand by and watch as anime fans get scammed and the scene destroys itself.

>What goes on outside of Gratipay is not our problem. What people do with the money received through Gratipay is not our problem.
>Unsavory behavior is not welcome on Gratipay.
>We’re not going to have /pol/ or /younglove/ communities on Gratipay.
>If you are -1 on my decision then you have to convince me that “enabling RHExcelion, 8chan, et al. actively interferes with Gratipay’s ability to also enable an economy of gratitude, generosity, and love” for others, recognizing that you or others being painfully offended is not sufficient.

HS subs are the exact same as whatever subs they ripped from. Usually this is CR, but it can also be from Funimation and other official sources.

HS have gotten much better recently, and are often quite good. It depends on the source, though. CR is usually solid, to the point where most fansub edits barely change anything (as D_S will often say), whereas Funimation is generally pretty crap. So if its CR subs, you probably won’t go too wrong.

HorribleSubs is 99.9% of the time a straight rip group. So they take whatever Funimation/Daisuki/Crunchyroll stream and provide them mostly untouched to viewers.

HS/CR are not considered “bad” on the whole. Because these are professional subtitles (ironically, mostly translated by current/former fansubbers), they will often be good enough for most viewers.

However, if you are looking for the best releases, most of the time you will want to look at fansubs. There are various reasons for this, but generally it’s because fansubbers will improve the existing works by cleaning up the English, providing more visually appealing subtitles, and translating various things (such as songs) that the official releases won’t or legally can’t.

One of the tricky things with fansubs is the huge variance in quality across the scene, even between different shows released by the same fansub group. Official subs do not tend to have that variance, which is why MOST people will watch them. Providing viewers with an insight into this variance is one of the main purposes of the fansub reviews I post on this blog (though you’ll find a lot of people read them for other reasons, like improving their English or just for entertainment). I am, however, very slow at getting reviews done, so if you decide to watch fansubbed anime, I recommend you watch the shows with whatever group you think makes sense and then take my reviews into consideration.

One thing to note is that there are several groups out there that will intentionally screw around with their releases. [Commie] is the most prominent of these, so I -would- suggest avoiding their releases, unless you don’t care about trolling. In which case, treat them the same as any other group.

Feel free to ask whatever additional questions you want. I’m happy to provide any insight I can. (Or another person, like QQwerty, will~)

Unfortunately, “trolling” is not a well-defined term in the fansub scene, as many people will even consider replacing a japanese meme with an english one unacceptable. Same goes for adding even the faintest special effects to the subs (other than KFX of course).

Also, to be fair, I don’t think [Commie] “intentionally screws around” with more than 1 in 10 or 20 of the shows they release. And that would be mostly bad shows rather than the good ones anyway.

“translating various things (such as songs) that the official releases won’t or legally can’t.”

I’ve always wondered about if that was the case, that translating an OP could be its own licensing issue. Is that often the case? Because CR does do the occasional song, but it always seems like random selections.

The OP/ED songs are almost always their own separate licenses. Sometimes insert songs are included, but even when they’re important to the episode, it’s not always a guarantee. See: Crunchyroll blocking out the Katyusha insert in Girls und Panzer.

I mean, look at this shit. It’s the only goddamn reason to watch GuP. I feel sorry for the streaming lesser race.

>The 2012 anime Girls und Panzer features the vocal version of this song in contrast to its usual instrumental covers. Differences in copyright law between Japan and the US prevented the song from being used in the English localization (from wiki).

So it is a copyright issue. Not to mention that the song was made in 1939, meaning it probably is still under copyright.

>In most of the world, the default length of copyright is the life of the author plus either 50 or 70 years (also from wiki).

Yeah, it’s my understanding that the OP/ED licenses are held by the recording artist NOT the animation studio for some reason, and that includes translating the songs themselves. Unfortunately, Japan is renowned for its red-tape bureaucracy when it comes to anything copyright-related, so who knows how long it’ll take to resolve to a point where streaming licenses INCLUDE the right to translate the songs in the episodes. Considering it took until late 2008/early 2009 for Japanese companies to even consider monetizing anime streaming with the advent of CR (when the West had been way in advance of that in other areas of medias such as movies, music and TV series), I wouldn’t hold your breath that it’ll change any time soon.

They can hold the rights to the performance even if they don’t hold the rights to the actual music itself. Which makes sense, if you think about it – the London Philharmonic could sue you if you distributed their performance of Mozart, but nothing’s stopping you from creating your own performance of the same music. I’m guessing that, in this instance, it was cheaper to replace the song completely than to pay for an alternative performance of the song (or at least, less of a legal minefield).

Interestingly, it seems the states recognize it under copyright where Japan maybe(?)doesn’t. So that’s the difference in law, I believe. This is an issue between America and Russia, rather than Japan this particular time, from best I can gather.

Best subs for Seitokai Yakuindomo? Watching CGi for now, downloading Elysium to see if there’s a difference, I’d rather have *s in the subs when something the characters say is beeped, CGi “translates” it though.

Maybe I’m missing something? All I see is the torrent, and it says to stop shitposting or be banned. I thought he meant stop posting shitty torrents because he disapproved of Tenshi’s encoding methods.

Oh wow, didn’t notice that one, never thought highly of them since they started shitting on “Ch*uu” for being slower than them with Nanatsu but jesus, they need to pick a better leader since I’m pretty sure only one guy runs their accounts, unless they are all fucking assholes.

>“Ch*uu” for being slower than them with Nanatsu
Do they even encode their releases, or do they just slap their shitty subs onto a raw they downloaded off Nyaa? Reading comments on their website, it sounds like they don’t have a capper, and they just go with any raw group that’s put the episode up on Nyaa.

It’s not hard to release thing quickly when you do a horrible job of it.

This, plus Chyuu have Trusted status. He probably developed a massive hubris after they “beat” Chyuu by releasing shitty versions faster than Chyuu and by getting decent download numbers, which would explain why he thinks groups like Kantai are nobody groups.

Yeah, I’m pretty sure it’s one guy. The popularboy-sama dude that runs the group needs to get his shit together and realize he’s not Commie or FFF and has no right to shittalk everyone else. The other guy shaddrag (I think) that runs the group is OK imo.

I hated these guys the instant I saw those retarded Editor’s notes they had on Nanatsu “converting” Imperial to Metric. Now it turns out they shittalk other groups (and themselves under an Anonymous name, what?)

Small aside and I didn’t know where else to post it. I’ve seen a lot of people misjudging the groups in the “cartel”, and wanted to make an amends to misstatements and falsities I had said in the past. As the creator of the term, I felt it my responsibility to clarify these misconceptions.

The original cartel was UTW, gg, Commie, Underwater, and Ryuumaru in that they usually did not overlap in shows and all subbed at the same speed. All groups, with the exception of UTW, typically made cookie cutter unloved subs designed solely for downloads.

The current cartel due to deaths of some groups and changes in policies is much smaller. Commie, Underwater, and Vivid are the groups considered cartel. While many groups are friends with benefits with the cartel such as FFF, ASenshi, or TLWiki, they are not the core of the problem. The three groups in the cartel remain the same idea as the old one – they rarely sub the same shows and sub in the typical cookie cutter no-love sub style, this time for money.

Well, I actually haven’t mentioned cartel by name since like October. But I keep seeing it plastered all over places in the wrong terminology and it bugs me.

As for cookie cutter no-love style, it means that the people working on the show don’t love what they do. So they translator may not reference the source material or find little tips to help the audience, the editor might make a machine-like edit – or just not edit it much at all -, the typesetter might not put it the little extra effort to make the signs shake with the screen because it’s “not noticeable”, or the encoder might just encode on a seedbox with the same old settings instead of actually looking at the file.

Granted, cartel groups do not put out cookie cutter subs 100% of the time, and non-cartel groups do not always put out works of love. But it generally is very skewed.

Jing, I don’t think so either. But seeing stuff like memesubs or reading stuff like “thank god this is over” with nearly every show really just shows me that many groups now aren’t doing shows because they like them.

You’re jumping to conclusions here. Fansubbing isn’t the purely creative love affair that it used to be, and like I said, that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Streaming takes care of a lot of the work, and there are people now who just like to add a little bit of polish to improve on what’s available for those who care to wait for it.

Some people may pick up shows to work with friends or because they consider it a way to give back to the community. Even if they get tired of the grind and feel relieved when a show’s over, don’t you think they could still come away satisfied with finishing something? I’m not saying that’s always going to be true, but a sentence on a release post doesn’t give you a window into someone’s soul. Stop pretending you’ve figured it all out. Your tendency to prejudge everything shows me you’re too biased and butthurt to offer any real insight. You’d think that doing this dance for almost seven years now would’ve changed that a little.

Personally, I’ll go for something that I know was edited by someone I trust to do a good job. Maybe others are just in it for the cool typesetting, but I don’t give two shits about whether or not a sign shakes when I download something. To each his own, I say.

There are several examples of fansubbers adding their own little flair to it for their own laughs instead of love of the show. For instance, Twintails, Nisekoi, and Inugami-san, all from Commie.
There also are many examples of people just plain not caring about the show at all, such as Aldnoah Zero, Free, or Toaru Hikuushi e no Koiuta from Commie.
There’s also examples of procrastination. For instance, herkz deciding he’d rather blog about drama (within 3 minutes of it happening) on his twitter instead of typesetting Tsukimonogatari. I swear, that guy must spend like all day jumping from site to site looking for some mention of cartel, him, nyaa, Commie, or groups he hates. lol.
Ah well, at least my trap for him worked.

That’s not good enough, Kristen. Didn’t you mention Vivid and Underwater? Are you just going to list all Commie’s “evil deeds”, which in most cases aren’t bad choices at all? And what about you? Do you possess some sort of special power that allows you to work while lurking on their Twitter profiles?

That aside, I want to see evidences of Vivid and Underwater trolling and adding their little flairs to troll, or for their own amusement.

If you want a psychoanalysis, talk to Jing. He’s great at them and won’t hesitate to give you one.

But no, your motives are very clear through your actions. I know you don’t like Twintails and had to meme-ify it just to get through it.

If you want a really psycho-analysis, I’d say that you are very insecure. That’s why you need to continually A+ your own works, and why when anyone argues with you, you always jump back on the “Well I know Japanese and you don’t!”, ignoring all the other flaws of your releases. You want everyone to approve of you. You want that love and consolation. Maybe you were missing this love from your father when you were younger?

Googol:
No, those two groups are cartel for different reasons. Daiz is actively involved in many of the negative aspects of subbing, such as trolling groups, the nyaa A+ conspiracy, and trying to get everyone to adapt to the same over-localized subs so that we all can get machine translations of everything.
Vivid, on the other hand, is just an offshoot of Commie. It’s essentially Commie without the trolls, led by Xythar. While they do not directly monetarily profit from their shows, they do get kickbacks.

You think you understand other people, but you don’t. Your fundamental flaw is the inability to understand the things you believe you understand, a somewhat near-classical hubris. All your other personal flaws pale in comparison to this. You may be aware of your other flaws, but you don’t realize the extent of your own hubris.

I loved Twintails. The art & animation was poor, but I read the novels before the adaption aired, and was looking forward to working on it a great deal. Working on it was a lot of fun.

The rest of that comment is so outlandish that I’m not even sure what to say to it.

fnord, are you sure you’re not just projecting your own insecurities on me? That you have a big tendency to believe yourself to understand things you don’t? Or your hubris that has grown to the point where you believe that just because you know a bit of Japanese, you must be a fansubbing God and questioning you is the equivalent of heresy and mental issues?

And no, you did not love Twintails. You loved the potential Twintails had for you in shoving in your memes so you could laugh at what you did, instead of laughing at the show. Those with a true love for a show would never do what you did.

Yes Googol. They have a website, don’t they? They seed their releases fast, don’t they? They have a lot of online storage space too, don’t they? And unless you believe scum like Xythar would pay for these services out of his own pocket, he’s getting a kickback somewhere.

If I tell you that I loved Twintails, then that is the reality of it. You have no ability, none whatsoever, of looking into my brain. If my display of love disagrees with yours, then all you can meaningfully do is chalk it up to your own dogmatism.

You convince yourself you know what goes through the mind of someone ten thousand kilometers away based on little lights flashing sixty times a second. You’re on the level of primordial men desiring to predict the weather from rotten fish innards and bird flight in the sky.

I don’t judge your thoughts. I judge your actions, your writing, not their motivation, and that is the only thing that I can judge.

You know, I read a little poem when I was in 8th grade. It went something like this.

Be careful of your thoughts, they become words.
Be careful of your words, they become actions.
Be careful of your actions, they become your character.
Be careful of your character, it becomes your destiny.

So no, your words and actions are all the evidence I need to see your thoughts, as they are derived directly from it. While I cannot perform a physical CAT-scan on you, it is plain as day why you do what you do.

Kristen, you should stop… soon. Music is always sound. However, sound is not always music.
Trying to say that you can read others thoughts just by reading their words is an outright lie. And if it’s not a lie, then you’re delusional.

Yes, this is a sort of a joke. The idea is simple. I’ve been following herkz’s and Xythar’s twitters for maybe 2 weeks, fascinated on how much drama they have been able to find on like 10-20 different websites. I was curious as to how little of a life they really have to check all these websites. Do they check them continually, or do they just look at archives or whatever at the end of the day?

The results were fascinating. I posted something completely unprovoked and drama inducing. Within 45 minutes, herkz had already reblogged it. Meaning that he checks this site at least once an hour, a site he swears off of as total garbage. And their own delusions about me as a person just started piling on. No herkz, I don’t have a job, thank you very much. I’m currently a student studying culinary arts. The last job I had I lost in October 2013 after my data output slagged over the last month, once my many sleepless nights due to zaockle screaming at his computer until 4 AM started to pile on.

I’m sorry to anyone I offended in this little experiment. Except Anonymous, you’re a douche. If you’re going to say something negative about me, don’t post evidence that isn’t true.

As for me, my opinion is pretty simple. Do I believe there is an all mighty cartel looking down on us and planning everything, manipulating Nyaa as they please? No, not really. I simply believe that there are just a few people who are a bit biased towards their friends.

Baiting or not, you owe Xythar an apology for suggesting corruption on his part without any evidence whatsoever, Kristen. You’re welcome to your opinions but randomly accusing him of something seemingly nefarious without anything to back you up (trolling or no) isn’t really on.

I don’t know the incident you’re referring to but it would be equally wrong if he had indeed accused you of such without some kind of proof/reason. That doesn’t excuse you doing the same thing, however. You are not a child – the reasoning “but he did it first!” doesn’t wash in the adult world.

Look, we haven’t always gotten along in the past. Maybe it’s just our situations of getting strung up in the groups that we are, or maybe it’s something between us that causes all this strife. I honestly don’t know. I think that if I got to know you on friendlier terms, you’d be a pretty cool guy that I could work with. But alas, it was not meant to be.

Look, I may have said some things that may not have been appropriate. I’m sorry for them. And I really hope that one day, you and I can get along better. Instead of trying to rail on each other at every moment we get, why can’t we just work together to better ourselves? Why can’t we just appreciate the good that goes into each other’s releases instead of picking out the bad?

Cartel, Syndicate, Blue, Red, none of it really matters. All that matters is a love for what we do and the fun we have while doing it.

I doubt you’ll accept this apology after all I’ve said. But I have no right to demand you to accept it. Please take it and let’s hope that we’ll work together for a brighter future of subbing.

>it means that the people working on the show don’t love what they do.
How could you POSSIBLY know this?

>So they translator may not reference the source material or find little tips to help the audience
Most “cartel” releases have better translations than any Chihiro release.

>the editor might make a machine-like edit
Literally what?

>– or just not edit it much at all –
herkz is possibly the only one in the “cartel” that is guilty of this.

>the typesetter might not put it the little extra effort to make the signs shake with the screen because it’s “not noticeable”
Probably the only time I’ve seen this in a Cartel’s release is anything -Monogatari. That said, I didn’t see you making the signs shake on your Coalgirls release.

>for money.
The days of DDL sites paying fansubbers is long over. Commie is possibly the only group that still makes money from donations, and if you read the logs duplex posted, you’d see that practically everyone in the group was annoyed when they heard RHE was wasting money on non-fansub things. And just a friendly reminder that Chihiro was just asking for donations, while Vivid and Underwater — two Cartel groups!! — weren’t.

I fail to see how Chihiro releases have any more “love” in them than “Cartel” releases? Especially considering Chihiro drops releases more often than Cartel groups do. In fact, I can’t even remember the last time Vivid picked up something and then dropped it after releasing a couple episodes.

>Take a look at Monogatari S2 and the newest Bakemonogatari.
I didn’t watch your Monogatari S2 release because all your other Monogatari releases were so damn bad. I downloaded Commie’s BDs that they’ve released and their TV versions for the rest.

And you know what, I wouldn’t be half surprised if you just used the Anon’s patch for your Bakemono’s shaking signs.

Dude, if you don’t give examples, he has every right to question what you’re saying. You have your own little agenda when it comes to this subject, so you can agree that your word isn’t worth much at face value.

I’ve watched Bake, Neko, and Nisemonogatari from CG and not a single episode had shaking signs.

Chihiro’s TL, editing, and TS is also worse than practically all cartel releases, too, and you’ve yet to give me an example of how Chihiro’s editing is less “machine-like”. Same goes for CG releases. In fact, you put so much love into your Gochuumon BDs that you didn’t even bother to check Vivid’s site for the updated scripts!

1. Bake does have shaking signs. You are most likely watching v1.0, 1.5, or 2.0 which were made prior to shaking signs being possible. Please check out the release from August 2013.
2. I did use the Gochuumon scripts from the Vivid website. I misassumed that Vivid cared about the show and would have the most updated scripts on the website at all times.

Though isn’t it funny that you hated the CGi Monogatari releases so much that you downloaded the sequel AND Neko from them? When Neko had releases available from UTW and Commie, with Commie’s even being available in BD form?

You disgust me. This will be my last post to your lies and misinformation.

Oh, btw, check Chihiro’s drop history, because that’s also wrong. We have dropped 3 shows in the past 4 years. Not like I can really take much credit for that success anyways. I hardly do anything in Chihiro anymore.

And what about Vivid or UW’s drop record? Vivid has literally NEVER dropped a show. Even Commie’s drop record isn’t bad. You make it seem like Cartel groups drop show constantly and literally couldn’t care less about the shows they sub, and that’s plain untrue.

You may be right about Commie, they aren’t constant with quality, but I’m failing to see where’s the issue with Vivid. It’s probably one of the few groups that actually puts out quality work. You are getting delusional, mate. I’m yet to see a superior release by Chihiro, and fix the lazy typesetting for Kara no Kyoukai by CGi, please. You guys couldn’t even bother to blur things out.

Actually, there really aren’t. I only counted like 4 shows that both Vivid and Commie both did.

But it’s a bad thing because it squeezes out options. In the past, you were able to choose between a localized and an unlocalized version of any show, both in high quality. Due to the amount of trolling and spread that occurs because of these cartel groups, there no longer are good unlocalized versions of every show. You get the one cookie cutter sub, and if you don’t like it, you’re out of luck. You cannot even make your own version of a sub to your preferences, as they will then find some aspect of the release they believe you failed on and smack you around with it until you give up.

You know, I was going to write a lengthy treatise about why you’re wrong and how you keep blaming others succeeding at what you utterly fail at, but every single sentence you write is such a glorious brainfart, that I’m laughing more than any standup comedian could ever amuse me.

They are even deleting comments as off late, can’t even shitpost and bait in peace that they’ll remove my comments in like 2 minutes.
Userbase is god damn garbage anyway, if you don’t stir things up a bit it’s just sad to read them.

I think I know which one it was since I only comment like once a day, it actually doesn’t say I’m banned, just that I need to log in to comment when I’m already logged in, it’s something to that extent.
I don’t remember the torrent and don’t feel like looking for it but it’s one of those subs that a trusted uploaded as anon and there was talks about it being a Commie release and some guy commented on how Commie wouldn’t release trash like that, I just repeated that but with the burning sarcasm of a thousand herkzs, sure enough all the comments were deleted and closed few hours later.

tl;dr: “Remember how we said, ‘We don’t want to be at the whim of the publisher or a Production Committee.’? Well, technically we won’t be at their whim if we leave and hand it off to them. Y’all just got plot twisted.”

For reference, here were my initial thoughts on the project (I’m such a visionary):

>Chihiro getting blue rather than Watakushi
This is just another instance of the Cartel desperately trying to kill any newer, smaller groups by drawing attention away from their releases! Classic Cartel bullshit.

The “new groups” in first episode were Tling from spanish/french/etc. and failed(and stopped ever after). CH(ColdHell) is just TSing the show, Watakushi is not from yesterday(first torrent uploaded in nyaa – 2013-08-13, 02:48 UTC). Watakushi’s TLer is xia something and he needs to learn english. And don’t talk nonsense!

>I wouldn’t trust him [Dark_Sage] to judge his way out of a paper bag, and he knows literally nothing about any other aspect of fansubbing. Fortunately the site is apparently dying soon (sic!).
>Fortunately the site is apparently dying soon.
What is this?

Check the staff first / wait for a review
1. Anime-koi – Their releases can go either way. Sometimes they’re pretty good, other times they’re bad. If you’re not familiar with staff, I guess wait for a review here or wait to see what other people are saying about the release.
2. Commie – Some of their releases are excellent, like their Monogatari stuff, but other times they “have fun” with a script, by doing annoying things with the subtitles like making them shake with what’s happening on screen. Other times they add annoying memes like change “I like this” to “that’s my fetish.”
3. DameDesuYo – their official edits (as in editting a CR/Funimation script as opposed to original TL) are generally pretty good. Can’t really say the same about their original TLs, so I’d recommend first looking to see if it’s a CR edit or an original TL. They list this stuff on their website.
4. Chihiro – Some of their stuff’s pretty good while other stuff is pretty bad. I’d avoid original TLs unless its by — or has been TLC’d by — S0uten. Their typesetting, kfx, encoding is generally fine, it’s just their edits that aren’t the greatest.

*Watashi. Generally good all round, but their TL does a lot of things that people don’t like. For instance, he leaves nothing untranslated and a lot of people don’t like it. For instance, translating Migi to Righty in Parasyte. They also make some TL choices that people don’t like: bakemono -> devil, kuma -> ursa rather than bear, yuri -> homo etc.

To add to this:
I would generally avoid CoalGirls releases, especially if ANYONE other than Coalgirl encoded it (like Tenshi). Their encodes are bad and they do a bad job of shifting. If they’re the only option AND the show’s tv release was some God-awful, bit-starved shit like Rolling Girls (most recent example), then use CG, otherwise watch the original group’s tv release. Or then look for a better group, such as FFF, BlurayDesuYo, Thora, or ColdHell, off the top of my head.

I find it funny you don’t like BloatGirls but don’t mind THORA, regardless, that’s not really the problem with THORA releases, their movie ones tend to be ok but the subs in their TV releases can be pretty cancerous, I’m currently watching Xam’d and it’s pretty painful at times.

>due to general hatred of me as a person.
I literally, LITERALLY told the guy to only download CGi releases if YOU were the encoder. Can you even read?

And your encodes aren’t good. The last thing I watched by CGi was Gochuumon. It literally had more banding than Vivid’s tv release, NOTHING actually looked better, AND you removed the fucking kfx. There’s probably more to point out, but I deleted the torrent after episode 1.

I think that reviewing Watashi’s release would be more interesting, since they do original translations for the show, and D_S stated itself that UW were out of scope for reviews due to minimal editing.

I watched a few episodes from Watashi, translation at times was quite approximative. Some scenes didn’t really make sense, whereas they did on CR’s version. Although it’s a minimal CR edit, UW is doing a better job here.